Three questions from the 2018 High School Math exam

Is too difficult good differentiation?

Mr. Nguyen Anh Dung - former Math teacher at Lam Son High School (Thanh Hoa), who trained many generations of students to win international and national prizes, commented on this year's Math exam:

“The first 20 questions of the test are suitable for average students. The next 10 questions are capable of differentiating between average and good students. With the last 20 questions, good students will find it very difficult to do each question in 4-5 minutes. Most of these questions must be done in detail in an essay style to choose the correct answer. It is very difficult to apply guesswork and elimination to choose the correct answer. Many students choose the answer based on their feelings, and maybe they are correct.”

Mr. Dung noted that the assessment of "difficult or easy" is in relation to the time limit of the exam. For example, each difficult question takes 4-5 minutes to solve, but with 20 difficult questions, the 90-minute time limit of a multiple-choice test cannot meet the requirement.

Mr. Dung said that the number of difficult questions in this year's exam was too many - difficult both in terms of orientation and implementation of the solution.

“Most of the questions from 31 to 50 are very difficult. It should be understood that just because the test has many difficult questions, it does not mean that it differentiates the students' levels.”

At the press conference ending the exam supervision on the afternoon of June 27, a representative of the Ministry of Education and Training said that this year's exam questions had higher differentiation and the difficulty of the questions increased, which was obvious because the questions covered a wider range - both the 11th and 12th grade programs.

In the 2017 exam, there were many 10s, and in some cases, even those with more than 29 points still failed the medical school entrance exam. This year, many comments said that a 10 would be rare, and even the number of candidates with high scores would decrease significantly.

The fact that the Math exam questions in the last two years have been too difficult or too easy has made the public question, "Is the Ministry of Education and Training following public opinion and making things difficult for candidates?", or is the Ministry itself wondering about the 2-in-1 purpose of this exam?

If the exam is too difficult, the graduation goal that the Ministry still affirms is the main purpose will be neglected. At this time, increasing the differentiation of the exam is to serve the purpose of university and college admission of the schools.

If the exam is so easy that most localities' graduation rates are over 90%, is it necessary to organize a national exam with such dual goals?

Answering this question, Mr. Nguyen Anh Dung said that the "2 in 1" purpose makes the exam so difficult. "It must be seen that the nature of the high school graduation exam and the university entrance exam are different" - he said.

However, he does not support letting localities organize their own graduation exams. “In our country, the general education program is common to all localities, so a common graduation exam is reasonable. University and college admissions should be separate. Schools can have a common exam as before or let each school take the initiative.”

Multiple choice: Does it damage math thinking and ensure uniformity?

While most candidates and teachers assessed the test as difficult and long, there were also some opposing opinions.

Teacher Bui Viet Ha, a Math - IT expert who has spent many years writing IT textbooks for the Ministry of Education and Training, shared that he tried to make a test code.

“In the first 5 minutes, I could do 25 questions right away. For the following questions, I wrote quickly with a pen and in about half an hour I could do another 10 questions. After that, I stopped doing it, but that still meant I could do about 35 questions in 35 minutes.”

According to him, such a test is fine. Because the test needs to meet the requirements: multiple choice, graduation assessment, classification for university admission; so the shortcomings are inevitable.

Before the Math exam was organized in the form of multiple choice since 2017, there were many analyses by the Mathematical community about whether this exam form was suitable or not. Many scientists believe that the multiple choice exam form of Math will damage students' mathematical thinking.

Commenting on this issue, teacher Nguyen Anh Dung shared: “The characteristic of Math is logical thinking. Multiple choice tests like this year’s exam make teaching and learning heavy, making students lose interest in the subject. I think that essay tests in Math are more suitable. Students are trained in thinking and solving skills better.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Bui Viet Ha said that multiple-choice exams need to accept some shortcomings: “For example, if a student who knows nothing randomly circles answer A from beginning to end, he will almost certainly get more than 2 points. That is the price of multiple-choice exams. In return, this format does not require manual marking.”

Dr. Sai Cong Hong discussed:"Standardized testing is our own immaturity"

Another problem that arises when exams are organized in the form of multiple-choice tests is that candidates complain that one test is difficult and another is easy.

In response to the question about how to balance the difficulty of multiple choice test codes, Mr. Sai Cong Hong affirmed at the press conference on June 27 that the process of standardizing questions in the test bank is carried out systematically with the support of technology, so it is impossible for questions of the same level in different test codes to have different levels of difficulty. As for explaining how to balance the difficulty, this is a very complicated technical issue that cannot be explained in a few sentences.

However, the representative of the Ministry of Education and Training has not made any confirmation about the proposal to announce the score distribution of each test code to prove that the difficulty level between the test codes is equivalent.